God Is Disappointed In You Page 14

  “Is my neighbor the guy next door? The people on my street? My fellow Jews?” Predictably, Jesus responded with a story.

  “A man was traveling when he was jumped by bandits who beat him up, robbed him, and left him for dead. He lay there bleeding on the street when a priest came riding by on a donkey. ‘I’m saved!’ the man thought, but the priest just trotted over him and kept on going.

  “Later, someone else happened by— a man he recognized from his Synagogue. ‘Okay, this time, I’m really saved!’ the man reassured himself. But again, the traveler just puttered around him, taking care not to get any blood on his clothes.

  “Finally, he saw a third man coming down the road, a Samaritan. We all know how much those Samaritans hate us Jews, right?

  Well, the poor man’s laying there on the road thinking, ‘Could this day get any shittier?’ But the Samaritan stops, patches the man up, takes him to the nearest town, and sits by his bedside until he’s healed.

  He even pays the man’s hospital bills. So, I’ll put it to you…which one of those three men would you say was his neighbor?”

  “It’s the guy from the synagogue, right?” the man said confidently.

  “Whatever,” Jesus sighed.

  Jesus saw adultery, murder, and materialism as the natural consequence of letting yourself be consumed with lust, hate, and greed. To Jesus, it didn’t do you much good to constantly resist temptation. You suffer more from unrequited desires than the ones you actually give in to. And sooner or later, you’d probably act on those desires anyway, making all that self-denial meaningless torture.

  The only solution, in Jesus’ opinion, was to change your heart so you weren’t full of awful thoughts to begin with. To Jesus, it did as much damage to your soul to want to kill a man as it did to actually murder him.

  All his talk about forgiveness and letting things go was a little too touchy-feely for the Pharisees. Jesus would be preaching to the multitudes while the Pharisees would gather in the back, grumbling to themselves, “What is this hippie bullshit?”

  Jesus took his philosophy to Jerusalem. He was teaching in the Synagogue on the Sabbath, when he noticed an old woman with the worst case of osteoporosis he’d ever seen. She was hunched over like a human candy cane. So Jesus straightened her back, healing her. This really set the Pharisees off, who started berating Jesus for working on the Sabbath.

  “You have six other days of the week on which to perform your miracles,” they complained. “Come back on a Sunday! Anything wrong with healing somebody on a Sunday?”

  “If your daughter fell down a well, would you wait until Sunday to pull her out?” Jesus said. “I see you in here every week, cleaning the tombs of the prophets, when it was someone just as uptight as you who killed the prophets to begin with. Do you really think you can win God over with chores? God doesn’t need brown-nosers, he wants followers with loving hearts, and you Pharisees, your hearts are nothing but unmarked graves.”

  Furious, one of the Pharisees took Jesus aside and told him that he should leave Jerusalem if he knew what was good for him.

  “Why bother?” Jesus asked. “All the best prophets die in Jerusalem.”

  The Pharisees were impressed by Jesus’ knowledge of the Torah, but they boiled with anger over his constant insults, and were appalled by the fact that he was trying to extend the love of God, which they’d earned through a lifetime of meticulous observance, to every lush and pervert in the street.

  “How can you possibly say that God loves these people who’ve spent their whole lives ignoring his commandments? How can somebody who despises the Laws of Moses ever become a Jew again?” the Pharisees wanted to know.

  So Jesus told them the story of the Prodigal Son, which was about a spoiled rich kid who went on a drunken spending spree with his dad’s money.

  The Prodigal Son bugged his dad to get an advance on his inheritance. Once he got his hands on the money, he left his dad and brother on the farm, ran off to the city, and started living like a club kid.

  He bought expensive clothes, paid for his friends’ drinks, and took them all out for barbecued goat every night. But it wasn’t long before he ran through his daddy’s money and found himself living on the streets. When the money was gone, all his party-friends disappeared. He was forced to beg for food and pawned his leather pants. His rock bottom moment came one day when he found himself picking leftover corn out of a pig trough.

  Having blown through his inheritance, the Prodigal Son returned home in shame, hoping his dad would hire him on as a servant. He braced himself for how angry his dad would be.

  But when the father saw his emaciated, disheveled son trudging up the driveway, he ran out to meet him, wrapped a warm coat around his shoulders, and put a gold ring on his finger. That night he threw a party to celebrate the return of his lost son.

  The man’s other son didn’t understand why his brother should get a party with balloons and cake for throwing his life away and wasting everything he had been given. The father turned to him and said, “Son, the fact that I love your brother doesn’t mean I love you any less. You’ll still get everything coming to you for leading a good life. But today, can’t you just be happy that your brother has come back to us?”

  Jesus was well aware of the enemies he’d made because of his teachings. Knowing that he was living on borrowed time, Jesus had one last Passover dinner with his disciples, where he announced that he was going to be killed soon.

  This caused an uproar among the disciples who, instead of saying, “Gee, that’s too bad,” or “We’ll really miss you, Jesus,” began arguing among themselves over who was going to take over when Jesus died.

  So they asked Jesus to decide. “Lord, this is totally your call.

  Just tell us who’ll be the boss when you’re dead. Not that we want you to die, Lord. We’re all very broken up about that. But is it me? It’s me, isn’t it?”

  “You want to know which of you will lead after I’m gone?” Jesus asked.

  “Yes!” they replied.

  “Whichever one of you serves the most,” Jesus replied.

  That night Jesus was arrested. They took him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, on the grounds that Jesus was trying to lead a revolt and make himself king. Pilate found Jesus to be more pathetic than threatening, and didn’t really want to deal with the whole mess, so he sent Jesus to King Herod and asked him to figure out whether or not Jesus was actually trying to put himself on the throne.

  Herod was really excited to have Jesus at the palace, thinking he would put on a great magic show. To his disappointment, Herod found Jesus to be boring and something of a mope. So, as a joke, Herod dressed Jesus up in a king’s robe and sent him back to Pilate. Seeing this skinny, sad man in a loincloth draped in a royal purple robe, Pilate bust out laughing.

  It was such a funny, mean-spirited joke that it instantly made Pilate and Herod best friends. He still wasn’t convinced that Jesus was much of a threat, but wanting to keep everyone happy, Pilate relented and had Jesus executed, crucifying him on the outskirts of town.

  As he slowly bled to death, it seemed like the whole world had gathered to ridicule Jesus. As he hung there dying, they beat and mocked Jesus for being so naive as to waste his time on pathetic and misguided ideas like forgiveness. For which he forgave them.

  The Gospel of John

  Life in Heaven was a lonely affair, so God decided to shake things up by sending his spirit down to Earth to invite everyone to join him.

  When his spirit floated down to Earth, it decided to inhabit a little baby named Jesus. You could even say that Jesus was the Son of God. When Jesus turned thirty years old, he put together a group of disciples, followers who worked as his assistants, bodyguards, and best friends. Together, they became regulars on the festival circuit, traveling all over Israel, and extending God’s invitation to everyone they met.

  Jesus and his disciples were just starting out when they were invit
ed to a wedding. When the wedding reception ran out of wine, Jesus told the hosts to take their empty jugs out to the well and fill them with water. Once they’d done as they were told, Jesus transformed the water into wine. Everyone went on about how much better the magical wine was than the normal wine. The common practice in those days was to polish off the good wine at the beginning of the party and save the cheap wine for later after everyone was too drunk to tell the difference, so having such good wine at the end of a party was a rare treat.

  Every year, the Jews would all go to the temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifices to God and atone for their sins. The temple was sort of like God’s swear-jar. Before entering, visitors were required to cleanse themselves in a bathing ritual. As Jesus arrived, thousands of people were lined up outside the bathing pools, towels slung over their shoulder.

  Everybody had broken at least one of Moses’ laws, so everyone had to go. Moses had handed down so many laws that nobody could possibly follow them all. You could argue that the great genius of the Jewish religion was not in all its laws, but in the fact that you had to take a bath whenever you broke one.

  People were also queued up outside the temple, waiting to buy animals to sacrifice.

  It was just another normal day at the temple until Jesus showed up. But when he arrived, he was so irked by all the salesmen hawking subpar pigeons and sickly sheep that he began knocking over stalls and kicking over their cash baskets, which didn’t go over too well with temple management.

  Jesus walked around Jerusalem, inviting everyone who would listen to join him in Heaven. Jesus explained that Heaven was like the most exclusive club they could imagine. But, luckily for them, he was the son of the owner, so he could put as many people on the guest list as he wanted.

  Intrigued by Jesus’ unorthodox theory that Heaven not only existed, but had a velvet rope, one of the priests, a man named Nicodemus, invited Jesus over for dinner.

  “So how exactly does one get into Heaven?” he asked.

  “You have to be born again,” Jesus replied.

  “You see, that might be a little tricky for me…I’m eighty-three years old.”

  “I’m speaking metaphorically,” Jesus sighed, exasperated. “What I mean is that Heaven is a spiritual place, so in order to live there, you not only have to be born physically, but spiritually as well.”

  Jesus soon developed a large following. At one point, a crowd of five thousand people gathered to hear him talk. The sermon ran kind of long, and pretty soon it was dinnertime and nobody had brought anything to eat. Finally, the disciples turned up a boy who had had the foresight to bring five loaves of bread and two fish with him. Jesus took the food and started tearing it up, giving little chunks of bread and fish to the disciples to distribute to the crowd. Miraculously, no matter how much bread or fish Jesus tore off, he never ran out. He not only fed the entire multitude, but had leftovers, too.

  “Well, I’ve seen enough!” someone said, finishing the last of his fish sandwich. “This guy is clearly the Messiah.” The crowd cheered, and Jesus quietly slipped away before the mob could march him to Jerusalem, overthrow the government, and install him as king.

  Since he was in the neighborhood, Jesus stopped by his hometown in Galilee. He told the people there, as he did everywhere, that he was the Son of God.

  “I am the Bread of Life,” he said. “Whoever eats my flesh will never be hungry again and will have everlasting life!”

  “Well, that’s a disturbing thought,” someone said. “Did he really just advocate cannibalism?”

  “Metaphors, people!” Jesus explained, “Metaphors! I have come down from Heaven to bring you the amazing gift of eternal life. All you need to do is ask for it.”

  “You’re not from Heaven,” someone pointed out, “in fact, I know your parents, they live around here.”

  “Wait a minute…you mean that’s little Jesus? Joseph and Mary’s kid? I knew this was too good to be true.” People began to leave.

  “You don’t understand,” Jesus replied. “It’s not Jesus who is feeding multitudes. It’s not Jesus who is opening the gates of Heaven for you. It’s the spirit of God living inside Jesus who is doing these things. Jesus is nothing more than a sack of skin, like you. If you were to let God live inside of you the way he lives in me, you could do these things, too. We can all become children of God.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” they grumbled, walking away. “He had me going there for a minute.”

  Jesus and his disciples continued to plug away at the festival circuit, returning to Jerusalem for the Festival of Dedication. Jesus was at his booth in Solomon’s colonnade, preaching and comparing himself to a good shepherd.

  “A hired hand will run off the first time he sees a wolf or a lion. Those aren’t his sheep, what does he care if they get devoured?

  But a shepherd who has invested his entire life in raising and taking care of these sheep? He will do whatever it takes to save them, even if it kills him…”

  “Enough with the metaphors, already!” someone shouted. “No more ‘Good Shepherds,’ no more ‘Bread of Life,’ just tell us: are you the goddamn Messiah or not?”

  “Yeah!” others called out, joining in.

  “Ah, but if you were the Messiah’s sheep,” Jesus replied coyly, “you would know the sound of your shepherd’s voice!”

  “That’s it, get him!” the mob grabbed stones and bricks to hurl at Jesus, who, slippery as always, got away just in time.

  The people may have lacked patience for his esoteric imagery and the priests were constantly irritated at his blasphemous claim of being the Son of God, but everyone was amazed by Jesus’ knowledge of the Torah and his miracles. The priests asked each other where the hell this guy had come from. Someone speculated that Jesus might be a prophet, but when they learned that he was from Galilee, they concluded that there was no way that God would ever send a prophet from a shit-hole like that.

  Jesus was away when he heard that his good friend Lazarus had died. He came back to find Lazarus’ sisters Mary and Martha beside themselves with grief.

  “Don’t worry,” Jesus said, trying to comfort the sisters, “I can totally fix this. Really.”

  Lazarus had been dead for four days, so when they opened the door to Lazarus’ tomb, the stench came billowing out like a cloud of smoke. Jesus fought his way past the stink and made his way into the darkened tomb. The crowd waited outside in hushed anticipation. Sure enough, after a few minutes, Jesus came walking out with Lazarus, alive and bandaged up like a mummy. The crowd went wild.

  Jesus was having a celebratory dinner with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Mary broke open a pint of nard and poured it over Jesus’ feet, wiping his feet dry with her hair and making the whole house smell sweet and lovely.

  Judas objected to using such expensive perfume as foot cleaner. As the treasurer for Jesus and the disciples, he went on about how they could have sold the perfume and had enough money to feed the poor for another year, but the reality was that Judas was heavy into embezzlement and was disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to dip his beak into Mary’s nard.

  When the priests caught wind of Lazarus’ resurrection, they decided that something had to be done. If Jesus kept bringing people back to life, it wouldn’t be long before everyone would become a follower of his movement. Jesus returned to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. Everyone was abuzz about how Jesus brought Lazarus back to life. But despite his hero’s welcome, Jesus knew he was walking into the wolf’s lair and that it wouldn’t be long before the authorities came to kill him. Jesus wanted to make his last night together with the disciples memorable, so he threw a big Passover feast. During the dinner, Judas slipped away, ostensibly to get some more gefilte fish.

  After dinner, Jesus and the disciples retired to a nearby olive grove. The disciples fell asleep, but Jesus, knowing that his arrest and death were imminent, said a prayer:

  “Dear God, you sent your spirit down to inhabit t
his poor flesh, so that he might tell others about you and your Kingdom. Now my work is done and this flesh is about to die. And all I ask in return is that you look after his disciples once I’m gone,” Jesus said, gesturing at the eleven men sprawled out on the grass, snoring. “I’m going to send them out into the world the same way you sent me out into the world. To be mocked, imprisoned, and killed so that their persecutors might join you in Heaven.

  “They’re like children, I know. They’re selfish and loud and not all that bright, but they believe with such innocent intensity that it breaks my heart to think of the death and misery which awaits them. So could you cut them a break now and then? Maybe send the Holy Ghost to check in on them from time to time? He’s not doing anything, anyway. That’s all I ask. Be home soon. Got to go. Amen.”

  At this moment, Judas returned with soldiers to arrest Jesus. They took Jesus away, tried him, and sentenced him to death. That Friday, Jesus was crucified. As he hung there from the cross, dying, he looked up at Heaven and said, “It is finished.”

  “No, it’s not,” a soldier informed him. “You’re still alive.”

  “Metaphors…” Jesus mumbled, “met…a…phors.” And with that, Jesus died.

  The crucifixion didn’t really take, though, and three days later, Jesus was up and roaming around again.

  After the crucifixion, life went somewhat back to normal for the disciples. Many of them went back to fishing. They were out in their boats, having a bad fishing day, when a kindly stranger yelled out from the shore that they should try throwing their fishing nets over the other side. When they did, they suddenly caught so many fish they could barely haul them into the boat. They immediately realized the stranger had to be Jesus, as he was always around when something really strange went down.

  Jesus called the disciples to the shore and made them breakfast. Like he’d done years before, Jesus broke up the bread and divided the fish to feed his guests, but this time there were no fawning crowds, no fans hoping to see a miracle, just Jesus and his friends. Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” “Of course!” Peter replied. “Do you love me, Simon?” “You know I do, Lord,” said Simon. “Then feed my sheep,” Jesus commanded them.